Mock gunman scares students during drill

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An armed man who burst into a classroom at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina was role-playing in an emergency response drill, but neither the students nor assistant professor Jingbin Wang knew that."I was prepared to die at that moment," Wang said later.The Friday drill, in which a mock gunman threatened panicked students in the American foreign policy class with death, prompted university officials to apologize this week to Wang and offer counseling to faculty and students.Anthony Brown, vice chancellor for student affairs, said the university was testing its response to shootings of the sort that have shaken campuses around the country. "The intent was not to frighten them but to test our system and also to test the response of the security that was on campus and the people that were notified," Brown said.The drill came just eight days after a gunman stormed a Northern Illinois University classroom, killing five people before he took his own life.Brown said ECSU students, staff and faculty were notified via e-mail and text messages that a drill would take place sometime in the next five days.Not everyone got the word.At 1:31 p.m. Friday, the messages launched the drill with the announcement: "This is a test. ECSU is holding a test drill where an armed intruder will enter a room in Moore Hall and be detained by campus police."The mock intruder, a campus police officer, carried a red plastic model gun, according to a university news release.Wang, who teaches history and political science, said he was having a discussion in his foreign policy class when the man came to the door and asked to talk with him."Suddenly the man pointed the gun at me," Wang said.Wang said he did not know whether the gun was real. "I saw the gun but didn't have too much time to think about that," he said. "The man was serious."The intruder instructed Wang to close the door and then ordered the seven students to line up along the wall. The man told them that he had been kicked out of school and that he needed a lung transplant.At one point, Wang said, the man threatened to kill the student who had the lowest grade point average. Wang said he offered to let the intruder sit in on his class but the man rejected attempts at negotiation.Wang said some students thought the gun was fake, but were not sure. "I was the guy who was feeling the gun on my back," he said.After about 10 minutes, the class heard people talking outside the door, and campus police rushed in and subdued the man. "Even after this was over, nobody explained it," Wang said.He said colleagues told him that students in another classroom blocked a door with a table and chair -- just as students did in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech in April, when 32 students were killed by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho.During ECSU's drill, some students sent text messages to their parents, Wang said. Another staffer told Wang that students said they were prepared to jump out of a window.The Virginia Tech shooting has led universities across the United States to re-evaluate safety and implement new procedures, and many campuses have conducted safety drills.Will Morehead of EnviroSafe Inc., a Mebane, N.C. company that specializes in planning and evaluating emergency response, said he could not speak in detail about the ECSU drill without knowing more about how it was carried out. But he said there should be safeguards in place to protect participants."The realism needs to be there, but you need to factor in the safety," Morehead said.University Chancellor Willie J. Gilchrist said in a prepared statement that the drill was a learning experience."Unfortunately we learned lessons from frightened students that result when live scenarios are carried out," he said in a news release. "However, we want our campus to be ready in case of such an event."E-mail Jerry Allegood at jerry.allegood(at)newsobserver.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)